I am going on Sunday to visit the scene of an American massacre on foreign ground - Son Mỹ, what ‘mericans understand as Mỹ Lai · The leader of this murderous rampage was pardoned by Richard Nixon. I was 14 years old at the time of the killings and feel as responsible today as if i had been there 16 March 1968. It would be a comfort to me if this was the only travesty i feel personally responsible for in the world, and with gentle application of loving mindfulness, i will find comfort. For now, i feel it is important to make an effort to atone for actions which the culture i was born to has taken - reparations for the racist slaughter of black lives · honoring the treaties made in the name of my forbearers; crimes against love that i have committed in the thrall of lust · and acts of hostility toward myself lacking foundation or justification.
A tall order, but what are ya’ gonna do. We as a species are sleepwalking to our doom, goaded on by accountants and posers acting out their agendas no differently than Charles Starkweather of “Nebraska” fame. I cannot rectify the 3,000+ gratuitous deaths that have occurred in the land of my birth just yesterday, much less atone for the lives taken for profit since greed was introduced into the imagination of human development. What i lack today is a cohort of allies for altering that vocabulary of self-interest into one of compassionate concern for generations yet born. I am not sure how to proceed, when all i really want to do is disrobe fine looking women and spend hours depicting their ineluctable figures for hours and hours before i explore their neglected libidos for years to come.
Laugh if you must, but that is how i spent many decades after art training - searching for a muse/model companion/business partner, when from much practice i had determined i was not suitable husband material because of this unconventional approach to interpersonal relations - i then wandered off into the desert - literally living in Klan Valley of the lower Sierras before fleeing across continents in search of a woman compatible with my desire for a quiet life of loving creation · what could go wrong, except everything? My first stop was a French fantasy that i fled my homeland for was unwilling to acknowledge the extent of my graphic and physical commitment to her beauty and i too wounded from romantic delusion to stick around. It is at this point atonement confused all my ambition and i left for Nepal to “aid” a people in the process of deluding their own earthquake savaged selves about the generosity of a planet yearning to exculpate its sins with contribution, by contributing to the delusion of the usefulness of a “volunteer economy.”
I left Nepal for Ecuador and found the level of corruption enough to drive me to the other side of the continent Uruguay, it’s polar opposite. Much like the song “I Left my Heart in San Francisco” so too it is very possibly my muse/model companion/business partner lies supine waiting for my return once i get all this “atonement” bullshit out of my system. Yet here i sit in the land my country attempted to “bomb into the stone age” in the name of liberty and freedom preparing to visit the site of a massacre that is eerily similar to the school shootings enabled by the NRA of my birth nation. How do i explain to friends here that i think i have made, and enemies who have picked me based on the demographic i so obviously represent that the savage mass murder was nothing personal - more likely a function of the same heinous corporate influence that is attempting to normalize “anarchistic capitalism” in this same valiant nation of worker comrades 52 years after the fact?
I don’t know, but i’m beginning to understand that the atonement i am am seeking must begin with forgiving myself for following my innocent heart to naked women, moderate inebriation and unrelenting service to the planet and its people - is that so much to ask? We are a remarkable species full of contradictions, but i have found on balance that when left to our own devices we can be very kind, loving and creative beings. It seems a shame to end our DNA strand for the benefit of a handful of deluded capitalists enamored of a digital upload of human consciousness to a silicon platform guided by an algorithm developed by billionaire coding geeks whose refuge to their left brain disability has been to add more bells and whistles to wristwatches worldwide than Prince John would pay for to compute Longitude on the planet - literally a “king’s ransom.” The saddest aspect of these chronicles is the certain knowledge of how much fun our species could have surviving without the capitalist incitement to profit using “greed, hatred and delusion” as its “Clarion Call to Civilize.”
jts 09/12/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment